Naraku: Lord of Destruction
by Gamja the Wolf's Fang
Summary: A shunned angel-demon crossbreed. An exiled paladin. An unorthodox amazon and her demon pet. A child druid. A young sorceress. Five heroes who are chosen to defeat Naraku, the Lord of Destruction before the Worldstone falls into his hands. (MS)


Disclaimer: I do NOT own Inuyasha or any of its characters. I also do not own Diablo or any of its franchises, only a copy of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. Diablo is owned by Blizzard Entertainment.

I am such a horrible person...I haven't even finished For My Houshi-Sama and I'm starting another one...

This is again a teaser chapter like Starcraft: the Shikon Wars, so don't expect me to update it in a loooooong long time (although I'm considering starting my game/anime crossovers quickly before I lose interest in the actual game).

This chapter is mainly a background for those who don't play or don't know the story of Diablo II and the events that lead up to the actaul game.

The characters from the anime/manga will only be the gang in cluding Kirara, Inuyasha's parents, Naraku,and perhaps Totousai. Sesshomaru, Rin, Kikyou, and etc. will not be included. Also, Naraku will be replacing Baal as the Lord of Destruction.

This fic will also contain a lot more Inuyasha/Kagome interactions, but will go under the M/S category since that category lacks stories. :P

So on with the saga:

"" Speech

''Thoughts

## Asterisks

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# The Beginning#

Conflict.

The differences between a facet and its opposite, the difference between the light and the dark, the difference between life and death, of hot and cold, of up and down, of hard and soft...

Of good and evil.

The first of such great conflicts was the strife between Heaven and Hell, order versus chaos. The angels of Order were led by a council of the most powerful Archangels, beings of great power and grace who wielded the powers of the Light. The demons of Chaos were led by the seven Evils, demons of horrifying might and vileness.

For eons upon eons, the forces of Order and Chaos battled with one another for dominance of the Realms. Heaven sought to bring law and strict order to the planes of existence. Hell sought to fill it with chaos and destruction.

As said above, the demons were led by a group of demons known as the Seven evils. Of the seven, four of them were called the Lesser Evils; Andariel, Maiden of Anguish; Duriel, Lord of Pain; Belial, Lord of Lies; and Azmodan, Lord of Sin. These four vied and competed against one another for the favor of the three Prime Evils; Dialo, Lord of Terror, skilled in cowing his enemies with his fiendish appearance and brutality; Naraku, Lord of Destruction, master of destroying with a mere gesture; and Mephisto, Lord of Hatred, who could drive men and angels against one another with his mere presence.

After thousands of millenia of constant strife, the war was at a stalemate: each side swiftly replaced their soldiers with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of soldiers. Each faction would push through the borders of each realm, but were soon repulsed back. It was a never ending conflict, and so each side sought for a weapon to bring about the final defeat of their arch enemy.

They found their answer in Man.

Unlike anything they had seen before, Man had a sentience that rivaled that of the most intelligent of Demons and Angels. Yet, unlike the supernatural beings, Man had the ability to _choose_. They were not born to become something. they were not bound by fate to serve either heaven or hell: they _made_ their destinies. Heaven and Hell, seeing the potential inside these seemingly frail and useless creatures, began to convice and seduce Man to serve them.

Most would expect Man to immediatly side with Heaven: however, inside each human there is a dark, festering shadow that can be easily warped and twisted, turning them as evil as any other demon. And because Heaven had such strict expectations for its converts, many men who failed or could not stand the laws and decrees joined with Hell. Those who did join a side in the conflict were granted power beyond their imaginations.

But the Prime Evils were not satisfied with only _some _men joining their cause, they wanted _allI_ of the mortals, and any resources they had on their world, the world of Sanctuary. So the three brothers, Diablo, Naraku, and Mephisto, designed an elaborate plan to invade, infiltrate, and corrupt Sanctuary. But first, they would need to leave Hell without causing any suspicion...

The Prime Evils were not so foolish so that they completely trusted the Lesser Evils. They had noticed that over the ages, Azmodan and Belial began to doubt the Prime Evils. Apparently, the duo thought that the Prime Evils were losing sight of the ultimate goal of Hell: to bring Chaos to every inch of existence. So the brothers prodded, and pushed, and goaded Azmodan and Belial to convince Andariel and Duriel to rebel against the Prime Evils.

The Sin War that ensued afterwards greatly reduced the numbers of Hell, but the Lesser Evils were victorious: the Prime Evils were defeated and were driven out of Hell. And so began the coming of Hatred, Terror, and Destruction to the world of Man...

#The Coming of the Three#

Of course, Heaven did not turn a blind eye to the events that went on in Hell. They dispatched the Archangel Tyreal to asist the mortals in capturing and subduing the Prime Evils.

Realizing that steel would not be enough to bring down such power, Tyreal sought not great warriors, but wizards, to help him.

Fortunately, he found such wizards. To the east, in the deep jungles of Kehjistan, there was a great gathering of Mage Clans, known collectively as the Vizjerai. Tyreal gathered the Vizjerai, and several other clans, and created what became known as the Horadrim, a force of the most powerful wizard of mankind, specifically formed to defeat the Three. To the Horadrim Tyreal gave three Soulstones: large crystals that had the power to entrap the soul of any being, no matter how powerful. The catch? The soul of the being they wished to capture could only be snared if the host was destroyed first...

For decades, the Horadrim hunted down the weakened Prime Evils. Diablo, the youngest, and Mephisto, the oldest, were captured soon enough, but Naraku proved to be the most troublesome, as his powers were almost exclusivly bent of anihilation. Tal'Rasha, the leader of the Horadrim Mages who were hunting Naraku, persued Destruction all over Sanctuary until they came to the port city of Lut Golehin. There, they waited until they felt the presence of Naraku leaving the city, and caught up with him in the great desert of Aranoch.

The battle that ensued caused the earth to shake, the skies to rumble, to flames to erupt, to water to hiss and boil. Dozens of Horadrim combatants were slaughtered by the swirling chaos of Destruction. However, they were too numerous for even a Prime Evil.

Naraku, soon sensing his defeat, made one last attack ant Tal'Rasha. The mage surived the assault, but the Soulstone he carried did not. The crystal wa shattered into several pieces, and the Horadrim began to despair. However, Tal'Rasha ralleid his followers and eventually brought Ball down. Walking up to the struggling demon, Tal'Rasha slit Destruction in the throat and jammed the largest piece of the Soulstone he could find, which resembled a dagger. The black soul Naraku swirled inside, and each tremor that his spirit caused almost broke the Soulstone. The Horadrim had to do something quickly, lest the lives that were lost in battle were for nought.

But instead of allowing his mages to rest, Tal'Rasha ordered them to build a series of seven tombs. Inside one of them, he fastened himself to a huge rock with unbreakable chains and waited for Tyreal to come. and Come he did, with the soulstone in his hand. He jammed the dagger-like shard into Tal'Rasha, who would struggle and fight with Naraku until the Soulstone was pulled out. Tal'Rashas sacrifice was remembered by many.

After the containment of the Prime Evils, the Horadrim decided upon where each Soulstone would be contained. The knights and scholars of the West, in Khanduras, would guard Mephisto. the Desert Mages, the Vizjerai, would defend the Tombs with their very lives. and in the far east, Hatred would be engulfed by the Religion of the Light, the Zakarum.

Peace finally came to Sanctuary. But as with all good things, it came to pass.

The Horadrim faded away, due to lack of action and the lack of succesors. As soon as they died out, the Prime Evils began their work. As you see, they _expected _to be captured within Soulstones, for the idea was brought to Tyreal by his most trusted lieutenant, Izual, who was previously captured and corrupted by demons.

Mephisto was the first to break out of his prison. He allowed some of his essence to leak out of his confinements and began to corrupt the kind and generous Archbishops of the Zakarum, the High Council. Using these now evil men, he overthrew the the current Que-Heagen Khalim, the leader of the Council, and installed in his stead Sankekur, who soon became Mephisto's host. The Inquisitions agianst the so called "tainted" were bloody and horrifying.

After completely blackening the Light in the east, he sent the Archbishop Lazaraus to King Leoric in the West, to advise him at first but then eventually help him free Diablo, who was deep beneath a monastery near the town of Tristram. Lazaraus made his way down the levels of the monastery and found the soulstone of Diablo, which he brought up high over his head...

And shattered upon the ground. Immediatly, Diablo drove Leoric to madness, and turned him from a kind and peaceful man into a blood thirsty and paranoid tyrant. Rebellions were opressed cruely, and hundreds of innocents were executed for "treason".

The greatest and most virtuous of Leoric's knights, Lachdanan, suspected the corruption within his King long beforehand. His suspicions turned into horrifying facts that were confirmed when Leoric ordered Lachdanan to lead his warriors against the Kingdom of Westmarch, a land with an amry capable of defeating Khanduras's forces in its sleep. Yet Lachdanan, reluctantly obeying his blackened king, followed his orders.

Most of his men did not survive the war.

Those who did, however, followed Lachdanan home to Khanduras, and assisted him in killing Leoric's guards, and soon, the King himself. But before he died, Leoric cursed Lachdanan and his men to be restless forever, and not allow the peace of death to come to them.

And so did Terror rise in the West.

Before Leoric's death, Diablo had kidnapped Prince Albrecht via Lazaraus and used the young boy as his host. After establishing a place in the Monastery similar to Hell, Diablo began his dark work.

Fortunately, a warrior among many who came to Tristram to defeat Diablo destroyed Terror beneath the once quiet town, and once again the peoples of the west thought themselves safe.

However, Terror was not to be defeated so easily.

When the warrior defeated Diablo, the warrior knew that the soulstone that reformed in Diablo's head could not be contained forever. So he jammed the sharp point of the soulstone into his forehead, thereby cursing himself to contain Diablo as Tal'Rasha did, so many years ago. However, just as Naraku eventually possesed Tal'Rasha, Diablo soon took over his victor, and became known as the Dark Wanderer. His first objective was to free Naraku in the near east, near Lut Golhein. After picking up a foolish man named Marius in a tavern to do his bidding, the Dark Wanderer began his journey to the East, leaving horror and corruption in his wake.

The first to fall was the Order of the Sightless Eye, a religious order of warrior women skilled with the bow and arrow. Diablo, "persuading" the now shocked Andariel to defend the way East from prying humans, began corrupting the Rouges of the Sightless Eye and forced them out of their fortress, another Monastery. Most of the Order was lost or became demon-like, but the few left, led by Akara the High Priestess and Kashya the Rouge General, constructed a pallisaded camp and hoped and prayed for salvation to come.

That salvation came in the form of Five Heroes.

One was half angel and half demon, accepted by neither Hell, Heaven or Sanctuary. His father was a great demon general in the service of the Prime Evils who rebelled and fell in love with an Archangel. Thier child was Inuyasha, known as the Halfbreed among taverns dwellers and drunkards. His distinctive features, resembling that of a white dog's, drove nearby humans to shun him and distrust him. Everywhere he went he was met with anger and hatred. He trusted almost no one but himself.

The second was a paladin, exiled after speaking out against the bloody Inquisition that plauged the people of Kurast. Everyone, he claimed, had a chance for salvation, even demons. He asked, was not the Zakarum founded to change and convert people rather than destroying them? For his words, he was flogged, tortured, and cast out to die in the jungles of Kurast, until Inuyasha found him, close to death and with a hole in his right hand, lying face down in a rainy ditch. The paladin was Miroku, the Fallen One, and the first to befriend Inuyasha.

Another was an amazon, teased a scorned by other amazons not only for her different complexion, striking brown eyes and brown hair, but her weapon of choice, a large boomerang made of demons' bone. Her family was a group of amazons who specialized in slaying demons, hence the boomerang. However, her entire family was murdered when a horde of Zakarum missionaries condemned them to be demon-possesed and executed them. Sango was the only one to make it out alive. Drifting on a raft, she barely made it to Westmarch, and now seeks the Rouges of the Sightless Eye for acceptance and a home. Her only possesions were the clothes on her back, her weapons, and her demon cat Kirara.

The next was a young druid, who lost his widowed father when they were foraging outside Scosglen, the mysterious home of the druids. He would have died were it not for Inuyasha and Miroku, who avenged his fallen parents with swift strokes of the sword and scepter. The druid was Shippo, short for his age but containing the wisdom of an old sage. Trickery and mischief were his claim to faime, and many a times Inuyasha and Miroku were saved from starvation when Shippo put his foraging skills to good use.

The final one was a sorceress, the master of the elements. Strangely for a sorceress, she lived with her family while she trained among her mentors, a rare blessing to the mages who often never see their parents again. Curiously, Kagome was much more adept with the bow rather than the staff, and uses her bows and arrows as focal points of her magic. Due to her personality, she has studied under the tutelage of the masters of fire and ice. Young and naive, she hopes to become a great sorceress and wishes to help others whenever she can. She jumped at the chance to investigate the strange events that had occured in the West.

The hope of Sanctuary lies upon the Five. Should they fail, Chaos will rule the universe. should they succeed, mankind may yet have another sunrise.

Wecome to the saga of Sanctuary, reader. Welcome, to the tale of worlds..

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Pretty cool (but long) intro huh? Tell me what you think about this. As with my Starcraft fic, if you guys think this story is not worth it, feel free to tell me. If most of my reviews (should I get any) are positive, however, I will continue this story sometime soon.

See you next chapter!


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